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Independent scientific research institutes whose work influences the policies of the U.S. government as well as governments abroad, also impact litigation in the states. "The information from these think tanks does bubble up," said Professor Alex Tabarrok, chair of the Economics Department at George Mason University in Virginia. And, James Copland, director of the Center for Legal Reform at the Manhattan Institute in New York, said organizations that host "research" conferences affect trial outcomes. "A lot of lawyers pay top dollar to attend these conferences," Copland said. One such organization is the Collegium Ramazzini (CR), an independent, international ...

The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned on Wednesday. On current trends, "rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change," the IEA concluded in its annual World Energy Outlook report. "The door to 2.0 C is closing," it said, referring to the 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) cap on global warming widely accepted by scientists and governments as the ceiling for averting unmanageable climate damage. Without further action, by 2017 the total CO2 emissions compatible with...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. "The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The world pumped about 564 million...

Several Republican lawmakers are challenging the Obama administration's science czar over what they claim are repeat incidents of "scientific misconduct" among agencies, questioning whether officials who deal with everything from endangered species to nuclear waste are using "sound science." The letter sent Wednesday to John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited four specific controversies in recent years where scientific findings were questioned. Sens. David Vitter, R-La., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., rattled off a slew of questions on what they called "the apparent collapse in the quality of scientific work being...

There seems little possibility that next month's climate summit in Durban will produce an emissions reduction agreement -- meaning the world will soon lack any binding CO2 targets. Europe may soon find itself alone in the fight against global warming. A climate catastrophe descended on the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin early last week. Politicians and diplomats from around the world were attending a conference to discuss how global warming will affect the world. They examined scenarios depicting how millions of people living in coastal areas could escape flooding, what will happen to the fishing and mineral rights of island...

From the mighty polar bear to the tiny house sparrow, many of Earth's species appear to be shrinking in size, a new study reports. And the authors think it's probably due to global warming, a little like wool sweaters that shrink when washed in hot water. But other experts say that conclusion goes too far, blaming global warming for what may be natural changes. ... The shrinking victims, according to the study, include cotton, corn, strawberries, bay scallops, shrimp, crayfish, carp, Atlantic salmon, herring, frogs, toads, iguanas, hooded robins, red-billed gulls, California squirrels, lynx and wood rats. Two years ago,...

Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate MINNEAPOLIS — By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe’s climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. “We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon … coincident...

Scientists say climate change will eventually claim many victims -– including, according to a new report, chocolate. As temperatures increase and weather trends change, the main growing regions for cocoa could shrink drastically, according to new research from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Ghana and the Ivory Coast –- which produce more than half of the global cocoa supply –- could take a major hit by 2050. Currently, the optimal locations to grow the crop are about 330 feet to 820 feet above sea level, with temperatures of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit to 77 degrees. That range will soar...

Everyone who follows the climate change controversy even casually will know about the “hockey stick” controversy. Well, Nature magazine this week offers a new graph of interest: the rising trend of retractions of scientific research papers... Lo and behold, it looks like a hockey stick! (Heh.) The Nature story notes: [B]ehind at least half of them lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or faked data — and the other half are admissions of embarrassing mistakes. But retraction notices are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the...

Modern science used to pride itself on its insistence on doubting everything and establishing the truth of things based on empirical data. Often the lone scientist would work hard against the common assumptions and make great breakthroughs and discoveries. It seems such ideas about science are becoming old-fashioned and romantic. Today’s scientists are part of university establishments that must worry about their bottom line and prestige. Sometimes it is simply too controversial to doubt. Scientists are treated no different from other academics and are encouraged to tow the politically- or ecologically-correct party line to ensure their future careers. The most...

As Chris Christie continues to play footsie with a presidential run, we should be aware that the New Jersey governor is yet another example of the politician as scientific know-nothing, warning of the dangers of anthropogenic global warming. Christie — a graduate of the University of Delaware in political science [sic] with a law degree from Seton Hall — has decided global warming is real. How does he know? Says Christie: “I’m certainly not a scientist, which is the first problem. So I can’t claim to fully understand all of this, certainly not after just a few months of...

The data process used to arrive at the administration’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger “the public health and welfare” violated the Environmental Protection Agency’s own peer review procedure, a new report from the EPA Office of the Inspector General reveals.Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, requested this report in April, asking that the OIG determine whether the EPA “followed key federal and Agency regulations and policies in developing and reviewing the technical data used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding.” Now, Inhofe is calling for a series of...

Donna Laframboise has an excellent piece on how the IPCC has been assimilated by influence from the WWF.Apparently hawking the threat of dead panda bears is quite lucrative, Donna writes:It is important to understand that while the WWF might once have been a humble, shoestring operation this is no longer the case. It has grown into a business entity with offices in 30 countries that employs a staff of 5,000 (see the last page of this PDF). The US branch of the WWF alone employs: a Managing Director of International Financea Vice President of Business and Industrya Senior Vice President...

With a House Republican loading political ammunition in a national fight over government science, Interior Department officials said Friday they would stand by the work of two scientists whose integrity was attacked recently by a federal judge overseeing the Delta water wars. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, in a lengthy and strongly worded assault Sept. 16, said the two scientists deliberately misled him when they urged him not to weaken new rules meant to help imperiled Delta smelt in wet years like this one. He called one scientist, Jennifer Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a "zealot" who...

Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that the success of the alternative energy movement is hampered by a lack of financing. His comments came as world leaders attending his annual philanthropic conference expressed fears about rising seas. The ex-president's three-day Clinton Global Initiative for VIPs with deep pockets began Tuesday with a frank discussion about addressing global climate challenges, co-hosted by Mexican President Felipe Calderon and South African President Jacob Zuma.

For the second time in a year, a federal judge has tossed out a key permit governing Delta water deliveries. The permit was meant to prevent salmon runs and other fish from going extinct. . . . "Some of (the National Marine Fisheries Service's) analyses rely upon equivocal or bad science to impose (restrictions) without clearly explaining or otherwise demonstrating why the specific measures imposed are essential" to protect salmon, steelhead and green sturgeon,

Al Gore: climate science "reality" versus Republicans Photo 4:00pm EDT By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For Al Gore, the choice is obvious: Either accept scientific reality about climate change or believe what the fossil fuel industry is paying some Republican candidates to say. "Anti-climate lobbyists ... give massive campaign contributions and they're not shy about making it clear to the candidates they support that there's a quid pro quo. In return for getting their money, these candidates have to pretend that they really believe this nonsense," the longtime climate change campaigner said on Wednesday in a telephone...

Full Title: How to go out with a bang — score points for censorship — a poseur for honor! An editor has resigned after committing the dastardliest of crimes: He helped publish a skeptical paper in a peer-reviewed journal. God-forbid, imagine a paper being reviewed only by people who have some sympathies with your results? It’s unthinkable. We all know that Nature and Science, for example, dutifully send all the papers by alarmists to at least one skeptical reviewer, and since 97% of 77 climate scientists are alarmists, that means the other two scientists who aren’t, are very busy people. ...

Obama tells young reporters: Climate change a top challenge for young people By Andrew Restuccia - 08/30/11 01:21 PM ET Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing young people, President Obama said in a recent interview with young reporters from Scholastic News. “Another big challenge that your generation is going to face is the environmental challenge,” Obama said in an interview with Scholastic News Press Corp. that was conducted in July but posted online this month. “Although we’ve made big improvements over the last 20 or 30 years in making our air clean and our water clean, there...

Junk Science: The governor of a state under assault by the EPA takes on the patron saint of climate change over whether "warmers" or "deniers" benefit financially from the debate. Meanwhile, the nation loses. Is Texas governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry a racist? According to the increasingly bombastic Al "expletive deleted" Gore, who was interviewed by Climate Reality Project collaborator Alex Bogusky on Ustream last Friday, Perry's global warming skepticism qualifies him as one. Gore related how his "generation watched Bull Connor turning the hose on civil rights demonstrators" and that it was when racists could not answer the...